The U.S. National Science Foundation and NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) announced a $152 million partnership to develop open-source artificial intelligence (AI) models designed to accelerate scientific research and strengthen American leadership in AI innovation.
NSF will contribute $75 million while NVIDIA provides $77 million for the Open Multimodal AI Infrastructure to Accelerate Science (OMAI) project, led by the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2).
The collaboration aims to create advanced AI models specifically tailored for the U.S. scientific community.
The initiative addresses growing concerns that escalating AI development costs have outpaced university research budgets, limiting academic exploration despite researchers’ historic role in pioneering foundational AI breakthroughs.
“Bringing AI into scientific research has been a game changer,” said Brian Stone, performing duties of NSF director. “These investments are not just about enabling innovation; they are about securing U.S. global leadership in science and technology.”
The partnership advances priorities outlined in the White House AI Action Plan, which emphasizes accelerating AI-enabled science and ensuring U.S. production of leading open models to enhance America’s global AI dominance.
Ai2 will develop multimodal large language models trained on scientific data and literature, enabling researchers to process and analyze research faster, generate code and visualizations, and connect insights to past discoveries.
Initial applications target materials science, biology, and energy research.
“AI is the engine of modern science and large, open models for America’s researchers will ignite the next industrial revolution,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO.
The project will also build a national AI-ready workforce, supporting training efforts beyond traditional tech hubs to strengthen American competitiveness in critical technologies.
NSF’s funding comes through its Mid-Scale Research Infrastructure program, designed to fill gaps between individual research grants and large-scale national facilities.
Research teams from the University of Washington, University of Hawaii at Hilo, University of New Hampshire, and University of New Mexico will also participate.